Product Info

Platform

PlayStation 5, PC

Publisher

ESDigital Games

Developer

Dark Pigeon Games

Genre

Action, Adventure, RPG

Players

1

File Size (Minimum)

2 GB

Release Date (NA)

Oct 22, 2024

Purchase From

PSN Store

Steam

Awaken: Astral Blade is an indie game developed by a Chinese studio, Dark Pigeon. It’s a fast-paced Metroidvania that looks beautiful and is enjoyable to play. While a few hiccups exist, they aren’t enough to prevent players from finishing the game.

What’s Happening?

You play as Tania, a bionic girl with unique combat skills. You’ve been requested by your “Father”, Dr. Herveus, to explore the rainforest of the Horace Islands to retrieve the missing members of the Investigation Force. You’ll encounter local animals and plants that have turned into aggressive mutants called “anathemorphs” by the mysterious Karpas energy.

While adventuring, you’ll discover secrets about Tania’s origins, her fate, Karpas energy, and your Father’s plot to use this dangerous energy for his own reasons. Furthermore, it’s not just mutants you’ll encounter either. Tania will face a fellow bionic girl and more in order to stop her Father and save the Horace Islands.

Understanding the gist of the game’s storyline takes some work, especially the finer details. You’ll pick up research notes and bits of history about the island, but there’s so much information thrown your way, it makes it challenging to put it all together. It just feels cluttered. In broad strokes, it delves into why a once-mighty kingdom fell. However, what that has to do with your origin and Father’s ambition is a head scratcher. With how much information is thrown at you and feels all over the place, the game might have been better served sticking closer to the main objective and building more around that.

The game offers different translations and dubbed voices. The English dub, however, was disappointing. The acting lacked emotion and simply felt flat no matter what was happening. The translation of documents you find during your exploration could be tightened up and perhaps simplified in some areas.

Awaken is a Metroidvania that focuses heavily on exploration-driven gameplay and unlocking new abilities in a fashion that’s like playing a Metroid title. The game encourages you to explore areas and return to previous locations with newly acquired abilities to find hidden areas. Its nonlinear gameplay lets you choose which routes to take, and while it does provide some guidance, you are mostly allowed to explore freely.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee

Combat moves are quite smooth when controlling Tania. You have three weapon options that are unlocked as you play. You can also perform combo moves against your foes, and when the enemy’s health gauge is almost depleted, a command button appears to let you finish the job in a powerful attack. Switching weapons is as simple as pushing the controller’s trigger button, and combos that use different weapons result in additional damage. It’s just fun to experiment with different combinations and see what works with what.

Awaken has a skill tree that lets you increase your base stats such as health, learn new commands such as the ability to parry enemy attacks, and raise weapon damage. Many of these aren’t available at the start, so save those red orbs! Red orbs are like a currency that can be collected by killing enemies or by finding them floating around the island. You can also use them to purchase better equipment, items to increase recovery rates, and more. Tania can also change into various outfits that can boost her stats such as extra health and also change her appearance. Equipment can raise some stats while lowering others, so weigh the tradeoff carefully. However, changing Tania’s gear has to be done at a save point.

While enemies wandering on the island can be dealt with easily, boss battles require more strategy. Learning their attack patterns is a big key for victory. You’ll probably die a few times before getting the gist of what’s needed to be done to win. Luckily, the game offers a variety of save points to make backtracking easier for those rematches. If you lose enough times in a specific battle or a chase sequence, the game offers to lower the difficulty and even increase your health gauge for this moment. If you accept and are still dying, the health gauge will continue to rise until the battle or scene is completed. This is similar to recent Super Mario games where the game offers players an easier way to complete a level.

As you explore, Tania will learn skills that let her get around areas easier and quicker, for example, double jumping and being able to wall climb on specific areas. One of the skills you’ll learn requires jumping towards purple orbs that’ll launch you high in the air. However, the mechanics for how it works is frustrating. If you jump into this orb and hold the controller’s joystick (the one you use for moving Tania), the orb will throw her in the opposite direction. However, if you jump in and let go of your joystick, you are more likely to be thrown in the correct, upward direction. It’s confusing as to why you cannot use the direction on your controller to determine where Tania should be thrown. It’s even more frustrating when you are under pressure, such as being chased by a giant, mutated sandworm.

Vanillaware-Style

The designs in Awaken: Astral Blade are gorgeous. From the level design to the characters, they’re all colorful and detailed. Awaken feels like it was inspired by Vanillaware’s games, especially Muramasa: The Demon Blade, with its art style and combat mechanics. Tania’s design makes her feel like a soul sister of 2B from NieR: Automata. All that being said, the animations come across a little too much like stringed puppets. In addition, cutscenes could also be cleaned up with less movement at the very least.

The music is harmonic, but like the voice acting, it needs more emotion. Many of the tracks feel too similar to each other. Completing the game for story alone, you can expect to put in at least eight hours before the credits roll. Expect more for 100% completion and for earning those extra outfits.

The Final Move

Awaken: Astral Blade is a beautifully designed Metroidvania with fast-paced combat. Exploring is fun, but the storytelling and some gameplay mechanics could use some additional work. Still, it’s good enough to show Father who’s boss.

A PlayStation 5 review code provided for this review.